Mar 31 2006
On Immigration, All Sides Making Things Worse
If the debate continues as it is going, the radical immigrants (La Raza) and the isolationists will create such an atmosphere of emotion it will never be resolved. Victor Davis Hanson has the right take on this, which is the immigrants who marched were not necessarily hurting their cause – until they waved Mexican flags and began ‘lecturing their hosts’. I really enjoyed this summation from a California resident:
Most Americans I talked to in California summed up their reactions to the marches as something like, ‘Why would anyone wave the flag of the country that they would never return to–and yet scream in anger at those with whom they wish to stay?’
My wife is from California and all her family is still there. My sister has been in southern California for decades now (sorry Sis), so we here the frustration and the issues. It is not nationalistic, it is more like the exasperation one sees with dead beat guest who won’t get on their own two feet. Sadly, this image probably applies to a minority of the immigrants. 11 million dead beats would be impossible to miss. 11 million folks waving mexican flags would be tough to miss.
Let me put this in perspective, since large numbers are hard to get the mind around. Cuban exiles are a large portion of the Florida population. But they are a fraction of the Cuban population back in Cuba – and Cuba is estimated to have a population of 11 million people. Don’t you think we would notice the entire Cuban nation roaming our streets in an uproar given how prevalent the exiles are in southern Florida? Obviously most of the immigrants are NOT taking to the streets or radicalism.
The Hispanic minority in this country is extimated at 35 million (how many are illegal is unknown). They are now our largest minority in America. If the vast majority of them were radical we would know it. So two things need to happen. (1) The nationalists need to stop pointing at the radicals and stop smearing some 35-46 million people through racial associations with these radicals. (2) The majority of legal aliens, illegal aliens and Hispanic Americans need to distance themselves from these radicals so the nationalists have no way to gin up xenophobic fears.
But we don’t have a lot of time. The impact of mob mentality in the modern information age is still be ‘explored’. In other word, we are playing with fire and some one is already getting burned.
AJ writes:
“The Hispanic minority in this country is extimated at 35 million (how many are illegal is unknown). They are now our largest minority in America. If the vast majority of them were radical we would know it. So two things need to happen. (1) The nationalists need to stop pointing at the radicals and stop smearing some 35-46 million people through racial associations with these radicals. (2) The majority of legal aliens, illegal aliens and Hispanic Americans need to distance themselves from these radicals so the nationalists have no way to gin up xenophobic fears.”
AJ–a lot of these people do have these radical views. Maybe you just don’t know this. I am not for kicking people out, but I recognise a serious political problem. A lot of the Hispanics are pretty nationalistic and feel that since they are indigenous they have a right to be in America. A lot of this is the result of this leftist propaganda.
La Raza wants to make the SW into an Indian state. It is the same with Ward Churchill. He wants to turn America into Turtle Island and he wants America “off the planet.”
People who have lived in the west are familiar with these views.
These radical politics will complicate efforts to assimilate immigrants. La Raza does not advocate assimilation. They want to take over and kick out white people.
La Raza is really going to damage immigrants’ chances to improve themselves. But La Raza is not really for the Indians. They are for communism. Especially the more radical student organization.
It was one thing to demonstrate to show their economic power, but carrying Mexican flags is turning people against immigrants.
La Raza knows this. If they cared about Hispanics, they would say to carry an American flag and tell people to stress that they want to obey the law and be Americans.
La Raza wants conflict and racial discord.
Basically La Raza is exploiting Indians to damage the US.
They aren’t really about helping Indians.
They are inciting irredentist ideas to make trouble for the US.
Yeah, I know Terrye, you already said there were what? 450,000 illegals in Oklahoma? Only the number is closer to 45,000. Never saw you correct that.
But what about my state with the 1.8 million illegals? Think you even have a clue what it is like? In Oklahoma, the illegals compete with the Native americans who are often treated like illegals.
I will say that I think your suspicions of McVeigh having Islamic ties are probably correct. The people of OK got screwed on the bombing. Clinton and Reno wanted that investigation wrapped up as quick as possible and the capture of McVeigh allowed them to do that. But that is a whole different topic.
Terrye, do you even know what a “wet back” is? It is not a Mexican here legally, it is an illegal. Someone who swims the Rio Grande to get here. So, if I don’t give law breakers any respect, you will have to deal with it.
And while I do consider all wet backs criminals, many do not break the law again once here. But take a look at our prisons, Terrye. Why is there a disproportionate number of illegals in our jails? Is the population of California 50% illegal? Yet it is in the California jails and prisons. How about the United States as a whole? Would you say that illegals make up 29% of our population? It doesn’t. Yet the population in our federal prisons is 29% illegals. Why are 90% of the murder warrents in Los Angeles for illegals? You see, Terrye, those who respect the law do not break it. Those who have no respect for the law, and violate it to get here, will break it again.
You bring up our armed forces again. Terrye, you have to be a legal resident to join our military, illegals are not allowed.
You seem to think that I am against immigration. I am not. I am against illegal immigration. I have friends that are Tejanos. Many of them, hard working, loving family members, don’t have a chance in hell anymore to get a job. They grew up working the fields. My friend, Bonita, never got past the 5th grade because her parents followed the crops. Her parents came here legally and all six of her siblings are Americans. Her parents learned English and worked toward their citizenship. They even hung their papers on the wall so everyone could see they were “Americans”. Bonita is smart and hard working. She reads (even if it is slowly) everything she can get her hands on. Want me to tell you how many times she has been “laid off” in the last five years only to find out her job was given to an illegal for less wages? Want me to tell you what she thinks of the illegals? Her husband finished high school and had been driving a dump truck for companies that haul gravel to road construction sites. He was so tired of being “laid off” that he finally went to work for Halliburton doing the same thing, only it is in Iraq. She has two sons, one a Marine, one a police officer. Ask them what they think of the illegals. When they tell you, I hope you understand Spanish and your ears arn’t sensitive.
This whole Aztlan thing is just insane. Anybody ever see “The Final Sacrifice” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131550/) on MST3K? It’s as if some white guys with Indian blood started telling Canadians that Canadian land once belonged to the Ziox civilization and so everybody who wasn’t a descendant of Ziox needed to move out of Alberta. Or if that’s too obscure, imagine if a bunch of people started telling us that American territory once belonged to the continent of Atlantis, so all of us of European ancestry were squatters and had either to pledge allegiance to Atlantis or move.
The whole thing is so stupid and insane, except that there really are an awful lot of people who believe this nonsense and really are trying to outnumber us in certain areas of the country and reclaim the land in the name of Ziox, er, Atlantis, uh, Aztlan.
La Raza means “the race.” This is an organization that wants to have a new nation in the American SW that is based on race-Aztlan.
It reminds me of how the NAZIS talked about the “volk.”
Ideologically, La Raza has a communist ideology.
They aren’t really trying to help Indians, their real agenda is to take down the US.
Now that Hispanics have marched with those Mexican flags, Americans can see that they don’t want to join the US, they want to take it over.
This is a communist-inspired irridentist movement, but Americans are so confident that the country could never be broken up that they don’t really take the irridentist message seriously.
The goal is to turn the SW into a kind of Palestine and claim our SW for Aztlan.
If you go to their websites, you can see that they support a lot of radical causes that have nothing to do with Indians.
http://www.aztlan.net/
In the US, the radical professor Ward Churchill is trying to take lands “for the Indians.” His real goal is to get America “off the planet,” not to help Indians. Churchill and others like him are using the Indians against the US. Indians will be the real losers if push comes to shove. La Raza came out in these March demonstrations, and Americans didn’t like it. There will be pressures to kick out all the illegals now, which would be really hideous. La Raza would be happy to see this country overreact because it would give them good propaganda.
The fake Indian Ward Churchill admits he threw his young Indian wife into a wall, and she died a suspicious death when she was run over by a car while she was lying in the road late at night. She had a blood alcohol level of .35. Many people are unconscious when they are that drunk. Her Canadian Indian family feels Churchill was abusive. Churchill hits people when they make him mad. He punched reporters who tried to question him and has assaulted or physically intimidated others.
These are violent people. Churchill is supported by Maoists. They want to destroy the US. OF course, what will happen is that they will provoke violence.
Personally, I think that foreigners who promote an irridentist agenda and call for the dismantling of the US should be kicked out.
People who want to work and become Americans should be given a chance.
It is already starting. This is America. We fly the American flag at our schools. I don’t like to see another country’s flag burned, but putting up another country’s flag is really a way of staking out a claim to the land.
“This week’s tensions over immigration reform literally caught fire in the East Valley on Thursday when students raised a Mexican flag over Apache Junction High School — and then other students yanked it down and burned it.
“I know (they) shouldn’t have burned the Mexican flag,†said Jacob Stewart, a 16-year-old sophomore. “I heard it was raised above the American flag and that just irked me.— http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/62231.html
The reason all the people come is because they can get jobs. Only three companies have been prosecuted for hiring illegal aliens.
I think we need a national ID card so that it is easy to see who is a citizen.
A lot of the fault is with business people (Many of these are Republicans who want this cheap labor.)
Only now do people notice the political problem of groups like La Raza.
I vote Republican, but I am not with them on this.
I am not for kicking people out. We didn’t enforce our laws about immigration. We let companies hire illegal workers.
If we didn’t enforce our own laws, why should the illegals take them seriously?
People keep saying that the illegal immigrants broke our laws. Americans broke the laws, too when they hired illegals.
If employers who hired illegal aliens went to prison, the illegals wouldn’t come because nobody would give them a job.
Now these employers better help their employees sign up to be guest workers and legalize their status or the American employers should go to jail.
A lot of illegal immigrants even vote. People should have to give their National ID when they vote. Otherwise, anyone can just say he is a citizen and sign up to vote.
Instead of building walls, we should enforce our laws about employment. Americans–and many Republicans– are breaking those laws.
These businesses get the cheap labor. They don’t pay health care or social security to the workers. But these people’s educational and health needs must be met by the taxpayers. The employers are getting all the profit and socializing the costs to the public.
We need to enforce our labor laws and punish employers who have undocumented workers. If they didn’t break the laws, the poor would not be breaking our laws.
I think that the Republicans get money from businesses who hire illegals, so we will see if anything happens.
Once we get some kind of “guest worker” ID, it must be enforced–not just against the immigrants but agaisnt the employers.
John Hawkins: “7) Isn’t it practically impossible to deport all the illegal aliens? There is no bigger straw man in the whole debate over illegal immigration than the idea that you have to round the illegals up, one by one. There’s actually a much easier way to do it.
You see, the majority of illegal aliens are coming here to get jobs. If you crack down on the employers who are hiring them, then the jobs will disappear, and the majority of illegal aliens will self-deport.
Will every illegal alien go home if they can’t get a job? No, but the vast majority of them will and having, let’s say, a a few hundred thousand illegals in the US, as opposed to 8-20 million, would be a vast improvement.”
There is your solution….fine the hell out of these American hating corporations and greedy self serving politicians.
We already have these laws but they aren’t enforced. If some employers hire illegals then they are at an economic advantage compared to companies that don’t break the law.
Companies that hire illegals get their profits but the public bears the costs when these people are sick, old, unemployed, or needing schooling. The taxpayer has to pay these costs.
I think this guest worker ID is a good start, but it must be enforced.
It is a lot easier to round up employers than immigrants.
Everyone writes that the immigrants don’t respect our laws. Well, neither do we. There is no enforcement.
If you were poor, you would see that and figure that if you can sneak in that you will be OK.
I am against kicking people out who want to work. But they must register and not commit serious crimes.
I also think that the employers must pay social security and health benefits. These costs should not be borne by taxpayers.
There is no point to build a wall. They will come another way. They will come if they can get jobs. If they can’t get jobs, they won’t come.
This needs to be tackled on the demand side.
Its easy to blame republicans and business men because they are in cahoots to get cheap labor and the poor working man must pay the bill. Its also easy to say two wrongs (not enforcing our sovergnty and illegal immigration) somehow mitigates the latter. Its also easy to deflect the blame on the American people for not enforcing the law. Unfortunately, the facts are not nearly as clear cut.
In Imperial and San Diego Counties, the growers ran to the democrats to call off the INS (run by a republican president) from identifying and evicting illegal farm workers. The democrats put pressure on the republican governor (Arnold) and lo and behold the INS stopped. I think the facts are clear – both republicans and democrats are to blame here.
Explain again to me the logic that its okay to be an illegal because Americans don’t enforce the law? Both are wrong and both need to be addressed.
I understand the latter. Command and control out of Washington DC is lacking. There is kind of an East Coast mentality there that fails to understand what is going on in the rest of the country. When I lived in NJ, I thought the world revolved around NYC. It wasn’t until I moved to California I realized there were other things going on in this great country that weren’t being reported in the NY Times.
As the son of an immigrant, I don’t understand the attitude that de facto law breaking gives these illegals ANY rights and more rights than those who patiently have applied for citizenship. This is plain wrong.
Finally, what’s this blame placed on ordinary citizens for not enforcing the law. What the heck do we have elected government for? What do we have police for? Why do we have the INS? If these people fail us, we need to throw out politians (of every stripe) for the ones that will control our borders and evict illegals.
As I have said before, illegals didn’t just come across yesterday and it would take years to evict the ones who are here. Why not start the process instead of thinking of every imaginable way not to do anything? Get tough on employers, fine. Throw out recalcitrant politians, lets get going. Punishing sanctuary cities, I’m for it. Evicting illegals, let’s get going.
I would not be surprised if La Raza, and MEChA start to bring kids into the streets like in France.
The mayor of LA supports La Raza, I read.
Their goal is not really to work out a solution for illegals but to make Americans lose faith in their government. That is what terrorist groups are all about.
If there is violence in cities and failure to control the border that makes people lose confidence in their government.
I don’t want to kick out millions of people, but if we get a law that requires them to register and they don’t–then kick them out.
We have a right to decide who is here. The problem is that employers like the cheap labor so the laws we have aren’t enforced.
I really think a cheap solution would be to jail employers who hire illegal aliens. The way it is now, the business-owners who obey the law can’t compete with business that hire illegals.
This way, the immigrants would either register or go back to Mexico.
I think that employers should take the lead in helping their employees get registered. They have been getting the benefit of cheap labor while the taxpayer shouldered the educational and health costs of the illegals. The people who hire illegals should help their employees get their status legalized. The local schools should also get the government in to register families.
For a long time employers privatized the profits and socialized the costs–now let them get their workers signed up.
I think the people who are standing on the border have done a good job of bringing the issue to the public’s attention.
I do not think that people who are born here from parents who are not citizens should be given automatic citizenship. Their citizenship should be what their parents’ is.
That said, illegals who get with the program and cooperate should have the opportunity for citizenship after perhaps 6-10 years. Their young children might get an accelerated citizenship when the parents become citizens.
I think illegals who agitate for the separation of the SW from the United states should not be offered citizenship and should be deported. I don’t think foreigners should be manipulating our politics and calling for the dismantling of the United States.
I think if we kicked out aliens who advocate the sessession of the SW for Aztlan/Mexico it would be a good idea.
We shouldn’t have to put up with that.
And people who enter illegally should be met by soldiers. That’s what the Mexicans do on their southern borders.
We really need to lay down the law and enforce it.
And that means that American employers and officials should also obey the law–not just illegal immigrants.
Sorry folks, the Internet was down all day yesterday.
Anon, I compared the population size and imprint of Cubans to the broader *size* of the immigration problem to give people a feeling of scope. Maybe you shouldn’t be so sensitive? I am sure most Cubans can handle a simple numerical comparison.
Black Redneck, while you may feel you need to disagree – we don’t on the one thing you feel strongly about. Gangs and crime in my mind are legitimate reasons to be departed. Illegal AND legal immigrants (that last part I have mentioned but people don’t appreciate what a novel position that it is). The ‘one strike you are out’ rule is pretty universal.
Keep up the debate.
I spent much of the afternoon surfing through news and blogs of various stripes on the immigration debate, and I enjoyed much of the discussion at the articles here. Some of the groups mentioned by those leaving comments piqued my curiosity, so I hunted around for more information on MEChA, Voz de Aztlán, La Raza, etc. — diverse groups that seem to be lumped together by many a pundit, especially by those on the right. MEChA, for instance, has at most an extremely tenuous connection (if not no connection at all) to the tiny hate group Voz de Aztlán. It seems to me to be rather demagogic to take the views of a few extremists and attribute them to organizations that are in some cases loose, broad, unrelated, and not even centralized, and then to hint that such views are widely shared by many; as Ted Barlow asked at http://crookedtimber.org/2003/09/02/stories, “are the ties between MEChA and Voz de Aztlán weaker or stronger than the links between the Republican party and David Duke?”
MEChA explicitly calls for seccession. I think I posted that above.
I don’t think it’s explicit at all, sorry. MEChA seems to consist of numerous loosely organized student groups and its activists often refer to documents that urge such radicalism only in the historical sense (in the same way that many African-Americans look to Malcolm X without necessarily swallowing his philosophy whole).
The same site I linked to above includes responses by MEChA members to questions asked by e-mail —
http://crookedtimber.org/2003/12/17/return-of-mecha/
I would defend many of these groups’ views — I’m merely suggesting that the way the different groups are lumped together and the whole scene is painted by some is pretty propagandistic.
Oops — I _wouldn’t_ defend many of these groups’ views, I mean!
This group sounds radical to me. Go to the link and click on the other links.
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6781
LA RAZA UNIDA
P. O. Box 13
San Fernando, CA
91340
Phone :619-420-3826
URL :http://larazaunida.tripod.com/
Open Borders group
Contends that the mythical land of “Atzlan†was stolen from Mexico by the United States
“We see no human being as ‘illegal.’ Those who have arrived to the U.S. with heritage indigenous to the Americas, and specifically those crossing the southern border, are migrants on their own continent.â€
“We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our [Hispanic] population.†– Founder Jose Angel Gutierrez
La Raza Unida (“the Unified Raceâ€), also known as the La Raza Unida Party, is an association of groups formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s with chapters throughout the Southwest, especially in California, Colorado and Texas. As the organization itself explains, “La Raza Unida [in Texas] organized around electing Chicanos to Boards of Education and City Councils. . . . The spirit and force of La Raza Unida was truly embodied in Texas under the leadership of Jose Angel Gutierrez, a student and [the] president of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO).â€
Gutierrez, who founded La Raza Unida, is currently an attorney and a political science professor. He formerly headed the Mexican-American Studies Center at the University of Texas’ Arlington campus. In January 1995 Gutierrez made a passionate case for open borders to a Hispanic audience at the University of California’s Riverside campus. An advocate of mass, unchecked migration between Mexico and the United States, Gutierrez complained, “The border remains a military zone [a reference to the presence, albeit meager, of agents patrolling the vast southern border of the United States]. We [Mexicans] remain a hunted people. Now you think you have a destiny to fulfill in the land that historically has been ours for forty thousand years. And we’re a new Mestizo nation. And they want us to discuss civil rights. Civil rights. What law made by white men to oppress all of us of color, female and male. This is our homeland. We cannot – we will not – and we must not be made illegal in our own homeland. We are not immigrants that came from another country to another country. We are migrants, free to travel the length and breadth of the Americas because we belong here. We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our population.â€
Gutierrez has established a reputation as a sometimes crude and offensive speaker. “We have an aging white America,†he said on another occasion. “. . . They are dying. . . . They are sh—ing in their pants with fear! I love it! . . . We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.†“Our devil,†Gutierrez has said many times since 1970, “ has pale skin and blue eyes.â€
La Raza Unida held its first convention in 1972. In addition to Gutierrez, prominent members were Corky Gonzalez, Reyes Lopez Tijerina, and Cesar Chavez. The group’s mission statement, according to its official website, is “Re-Commit, Re-Direct, Re-Organize and Re-Claim our past Chicano activism. . . . We will seek group ascendancy and solidarity among persons of Mexican American ancestry in this century.â€
La Raza Unida opposes school voucher programs, advocates youth education programs designed to “enhance the education they are currently receiving in the public education system,†opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement, and, most importantly, supports an open borders policy. In other words, it advocates unrestricted immigration; the effective dissolution of American borders; and amnesty, civil liberties protections, and expanded rights for those who have already violated immigration laws to enter the United States.
La Raza Unida also professes “a commitment to the advancement of people of indigenous heritage,†an advancement to be achieved by means of “the complete reworking of the current [capitalist] economic system.†It further seeks what it calls “fair taxes for all,†which, in the lexicon of groups advocating wealth redistribution, means ever-spiraling tax hikes for middle-to-higher-income earners, and a bloated welfare state. Moreover, La Raza Unida asserts that the U.S. government should “drastically reduce the amount of taxes used to fund military purposes,†and calls for “an end to the militarization of society, including the borders.†The organization articulates its immigration philosophy as follows: “We see no human being as ‘illegal.’ Those who have arrived to the U.S. with heritage indigenous to the Americas, and specifically those crossing the southern border, are migrants on their own continent.â€
La Raza Unida’s contention that its homeland was stolen by white Americans is a central reason for its militant posture. In fact, the group openly claims that large regions of the American Southwest do not rightfully belong to the United States. This premise was demonstrated in the summer of 2004, when La Raza Unida produced an ad to publicize an August 24 rally to be held in a venue it identified as “East Los Angeles, Califaztlán.†The significance of this merging of the words “California†and “Atzlán†cannot be overstated. Radical Hispanic groups such as La Raza Unida and MECha (an acronym for Movimiento Estudiantil de Chicanos de Aztlan, or the Student Movement of Aztlan Chicanos) commonly refer to a mythical place called Atzlan. This is supposedly the cradle of Aztec civilization which was unjustly seized by the United States following the Mexican-American War, and which ought now be returned to its alleged rightful owners: the people and government of Mexico.
On its website, La Raza Unida “pledges to seek and offer support to other organizations performing actions mirroring those we address.†La Raza Unida went through a period of re-organization and restructuring after 1975, and for some time it lacked cohesiveness. However, the group appears to be much more active of late and proudly claims to be “doing outreach via the Internet as well as in person in events, demonstrations, and individual contact.â€
This is a radical group–La Raza.
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6781
I tried to post before but it didn’t work.
It is not “right wing” to say La Raza is extremist. Look at their own words.
http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6781
LA RAZA UNIDA
P. O. Box 13
San Fernando, CA
91340
Phone :619-420-3826
URL :http://larazaunida.tripod.com/
Open Borders group
Contends that the mythical land of “Atzlan†was stolen from Mexico by the United States
“We see no human being as ‘illegal.’ Those who have arrived to the U.S. with heritage indigenous to the Americas, and specifically those crossing the southern border, are migrants on their own continent.â€
“We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our [Hispanic] population.†– Founder Jose Angel Gutierrez
La Raza Unida (“the Unified Raceâ€), also known as the La Raza Unida Party, is an association of groups formed in the late 1960s and early 1970s with chapters throughout the Southwest, especially in California, Colorado and Texas. As the organization itself explains, “La Raza Unida [in Texas] organized around electing Chicanos to Boards of Education and City Councils. . . . The spirit and force of La Raza Unida was truly embodied in Texas under the leadership of Jose Angel Gutierrez, a student and [the] president of the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO).â€
Gutierrez, who founded La Raza Unida, is currently an attorney and a political science professor. He formerly headed the Mexican-American Studies Center at the University of Texas’ Arlington campus. In January 1995 Gutierrez made a passionate case for open borders to a Hispanic audience at the University of California’s Riverside campus. An advocate of mass, unchecked migration between Mexico and the United States, Gutierrez complained, “The border remains a military zone [a reference to the presence, albeit meager, of agents patrolling the vast southern border of the United States]. We [Mexicans] remain a hunted people. Now you think you have a destiny to fulfill in the land that historically has been ours for forty thousand years. And we’re a new Mestizo nation. And they want us to discuss civil rights. Civil rights. What law made by white men to oppress all of us of color, female and male. This is our homeland. We cannot – we will not – and we must not be made illegal in our own homeland. We are not immigrants that came from another country to another country. We are migrants, free to travel the length and breadth of the Americas because we belong here. We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It’s a matter of time. The explosion is in our population.â€
Gutierrez has established a reputation as a sometimes crude and offensive speaker. “We have an aging white America,†he said on another occasion. “. . . They are dying. . . . They are sh—ing in their pants with fear! I love it! . . . We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.†“Our devil,†Gutierrez has said many times since 1970, “ has pale skin and blue eyes.â€
La Raza Unida held its first convention in 1972. In addition to Gutierrez, prominent members were Corky Gonzalez, Reyes Lopez Tijerina, and Cesar Chavez. The group’s mission statement, according to its official website, is “Re-Commit, Re-Direct, Re-Organize and Re-Claim our past Chicano activism. . . . We will seek group ascendancy and solidarity among persons of Mexican American ancestry in this century.â€
La Raza Unida opposes school voucher programs, advocates youth education programs designed to “enhance the education they are currently receiving in the public education system,†opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement, and, most importantly, supports an open borders policy. In other words, it advocates unrestricted immigration; the effective dissolution of American borders; and amnesty, civil liberties protections, and expanded rights for those who have already violated immigration laws to enter the United States.
La Raza Unida also professes “a commitment to the advancement of people of indigenous heritage,†an advancement to be achieved by means of “the complete reworking of the current [capitalist] economic system.†It further seeks what it calls “fair taxes for all,†which, in the lexicon of groups advocating wealth redistribution, means ever-spiraling tax hikes for middle-to-higher-income earners, and a bloated welfare state. Moreover, La Raza Unida asserts that the U.S. government should “drastically reduce the amount of taxes used to fund military purposes,†and calls for “an end to the militarization of society, including the borders.†The organization articulates its immigration philosophy as follows: “We see no human being as ‘illegal.’ Those who have arrived to the U.S. with heritage indigenous to the Americas, and specifically those crossing the southern border, are migrants on their own continent.â€
La Raza Unida’s contention that its homeland was stolen by white Americans is a central reason for its militant posture. In fact, the group openly claims that large regions of the American Southwest do not rightfully belong to the United States. This premise was demonstrated in the summer of 2004, when La Raza Unida produced an ad to publicize an August 24 rally to be held in a venue it identified as “East Los Angeles, Califaztlán.†The significance of this merging of the words “California†and “Atzlán†cannot be overstated. Radical Hispanic groups such as La Raza Unida and MECha (an acronym for Movimiento Estudiantil de Chicanos de Aztlan, or the Student Movement of Aztlan Chicanos) commonly refer to a mythical place called Atzlan. This is supposedly the cradle of Aztec civilization which was unjustly seized by the United States following the Mexican-American War, and which ought now be returned to its alleged rightful owners: the people and government of Mexico.
On its website, La Raza Unida “pledges to seek and offer support to other organizations performing actions mirroring those we address.†La Raza Unida went through a period of re-organization and restructuring after 1975, and for some time it lacked cohesiveness. However, the group appears to be much more active of late and proudly claims to be “doing outreach via the Internet as well as in person in events, demonstrations, and individual contact.â€